To The Varmebaronen Owners

How do you like your boiler? Is there anything you don't like? If my house sells I will be buying my grandmothers house and I am looking at these to put in there. Thanks for any info. Brian

Hey Brian.

Its getting to that time of year where most folks arent thinking heat, so I dont know how many other folks will end up replying to your thread. I havent been on here in a few weeks myself....

I have a Vedolux 37, and I have been very happy with it this past season. My wife can use it no problem, which is pretty key to my satisfaction with it also. Plus there isnt a lot of tinkering that had to go on with it, it was pretty much just put in the wood, light it, and you are off to the races. I really like how easy it is to clean, and I got a lot of great service/support from Dean @ Smokeless Heat.

The only thing I dont like is the drain valve that comes with the unit and sticks right off of the front, below the loading door. Im just paranoid Im going to drop a chunk of wood on it or something. But thats a pretty minor gripe, all things considered.

The controls that are on it are pretty simple, and thats one of the things I like about it. It was also relatively light, so it was easier to move into my house than some other boilers. (that said, I still dinged mine up pretty badly )

Is it the best boiler? I dont know, that answer changes with whoever you ask. Do I like it? Very much so. I dont know where in Maine you are, but if you wanted to see one "in the flesh" before you purchase, you are welcome to take a road trip at some point.

Feel free to post or PM with any other questions you might have, and Ill be happy to chat about it.

I have a Varmabaronen Vedolux 37 installed and used it all last winter. It is connected to the 500 gallon tank sold by Smokelessheat.com for a total of 536 gallons. Ran 1 1/4" copper all the way from the 2-car garage into the basement to panel. Have water tempered to 140 into heat exchanger on furnace. Keep water heater at 115 degrees because sensor is 1/3 of the way up and it can heat the entire tank in about 6 minutes.

I have learned so much since it was installed- 6 months of research doesn't compare to 1 month of using it.

Since I've had it installed and used it, I am going to put in my 2 cents here for all of you. I hope it helps you all come to a decision. First of all, the boiler is a high quality product. I compare it only to other products that obviously have quality built into them. In other words, I can't compare it to a Tarm or any other boiler, only that is looks, feels and acts like a high quality product.

For the first month or so last winter I was firing it 1 time per day trying to heat the tank to 220 or 230 degrees and get through 24 hrs.. This presents several problems I discovered, only by deciding to try and fire it 2x a day- once every 12 hours and BAM!- I fell in love with it.
You see, you'll never get over the laws of thermal dynamics: The hotter one item is when next to a cooler item (the room the boiler is in), the faster the heat loss takes place. Take a simple glass and pour 180 degree water into it while in a 70 degree room. The heat loss will be much faster than if you pour in 140 degree water. This was my thinking when I started to fire it 2x a day. Just fire it to 180 and call it a day. That evening- just fire it to 180 and call it a day. This way your heat loss through fittings and exposed areas is less. And, you aren't sitting there baby-sitting it putting in more wood to get it to 220 or 230 degrees. Anywhere from 1/2 to a full load (depending on the heat-loss that day) and your're done- walk away. In the 40's I put in about 6 pieces and in the 20's about 10-12, light it in 30 seconds, shut the door and DONE! I clean the ashes out each night (don't even clean it in the morning- just throw in six pieces, light it and that's it).


I light it through the main loading door. Put a tight radius piece of wood in the center so it leaves a gap on each side of the suction hole in the ceramic grate. Then a straight piece of wood on the left and the right up against the middle piece of wood so there's hopefully no gaps. Then I take a handful of pine shavings mixed 50/50 with shredded paper from the paper shredder and fluff it on top, place a small piece of cardboard (4" x 8") on top of that. Push the start button which turns on the suction fan, hold the torch on it for about 15-20 seconds and shut the main door WITH THE LATCH IN THE WAY so the fire is getting air from the top through the main loading door. After about 1/2 to 1 minute you'll know it's firing by opening the bottom draught hatch and see the yellow flame. I start adding wood and shut the door all the way. I would say it takes me 10 min. in the morning and 10 min. in the evening.

I do the heat exchager tube cleaning with the brush every 3 days and use a wet/dry vac to get the ashes out of the top.
That's it! Hope you enjoy the install pics!

If anyone wants to know anything else about it just ask!

220 or 230??????

220 or 230? Could you be more desciptive? If you mean the voltage, then yes 220v.

"For the first month or so last winter I was firing it 1 time per day trying to heat the tank to 220 or 230 degrees and get through 24 hrs."

'I don't know how much more she can take, Captain!

I've got a quick, and hopefully not a dumb one - I don't see an aquastat or temp probe in the top of the boiler, so wondering how the over heat/dump zone is controlled? And what do you have for back up heat?

I'm hoping to have some Varm pics to share this time next year. Planning to take the first big step & bring home some tanks this weekend, then it will be game on. That is a fine looking install, I must say.

EDIT: That was all in reply to coldfeet1, BTW...

Thanks for the replys guys! We are selling our current house and will be buying my grandmothers house built in the 60's. My plan is to pull out the existing memco wood boiler and buderus oil boiler that is in there now. Install new wood boiler, tanks, and pellet burner. The varmebaronen fits the bill for what we want/need plus it is within our budget. Whatever we get I do not want to be a slave to it as I am now (wake up every 3 hrs to feed boiler). I have no problem feeding twice a day but I need to get some sleep in the winter. Brian

By the way coldfeet nice looking install!

Think the valve on bottom pipe is a NC for overtemp.

I saw that valve there. But overtemp valves are usually NO ones, and they usually get a signal from the top of the boiler that kills power to them and causes them to open. Just didn't see any wires or anything from the top of the boiler.

Thanks for posting coldfeet. Nice to know there are more Varm owners kicking around here on the forums. Im jealous of the amount of space you have!

Just curious, what kind of adjustments did you make to the air controls, if any?

The dump zone has an electric solenoid. As long as there is power, the valve and flow to the dump zone is closed off. As soon as the power drops the solenoid releases and opens the valve and flow to the dump zone.

Oh and on the air controls to the boiler not much. I have it open about 1/8 inch (the glass piece). Also, I bought 1 entire pallet of Eko-bricks and throw 1 or 2 in there. You can't put too many in because the smoke will overpower the stoves ability to burn all the smoke. But man those Eko-bricks kick out a ton of heat.

On the 220 or 230 thing, you can take a tank up to that temp because it's pressurized. I've even overfired it to the point where the stove shut off. The fan just shuts off and due to thermal draft up the chimney the fire just burns slowly. Of course, I fired up the water heater and heat to suck heat out of the tank when that happened. Yet another reason to fire it twice a day to only 180 degrees- you never come even close to over firing it.

And one last thing about tank size. I wanted 1000 gallons but I'm glad I only did 500. The reason is the more water you have, the tougher it is to heat up to temp.

How much trouble are you having heating it up? What is your Sqft? Our new house will be 1300 Sqft. My plan is 2 1000L (264 Gal) tanks, and either a 750L (200 Gal. with hot water tank in it) or the 1000L Teknik Tank with solar coil. So I would be at 730-800 gals. Brian

OK - so I guess that means your dump zone is set up only to handle excess heat in a power outage. It isn't set up to handle excess heat if your system/tanks overheat when things are cooking under power? Or is it tied to a circuit that shuts the fan off in an overheat?

Maple, FYI my dump zone is the same setup, for power outage only. I have a make-on-rise aquastat that I plumbed into one of the fittings on the top of the boiler. When that gets too hot, it kicks on one of the zones in the house. That pulls the heat out of the boiler, and lets me know there is a problem at the same time. We are keeping our house pretty cold due to how drafty it is (keeps down the wood consumption), but if Im going to just dump heat somewhere, might as well use my house as the dump zone!

Automag valve is for power loss, since then my other dump zone idea wont work so well....

It's very unlikely that you will over heat a boiler with storage that has power unless your circulater fails. most boilers start shutting the air down at 190 F. There are a lot of btu's between 190 and 212 in 500 gallons of water.
If it is a closed system you can probably go a lot higher than 212 before you run into trouble. If your used to the
boiler you wouldn't put enough wood in it to get it that high anyhow.

Not to mention that with the loading unit the system pictured would flow a fair amount by gravity, an elevated tank would do even better.

Such a nice looking and compact install, coldfeet. The vertical flue neck and side-entry supply and return ports on the Varm really worked out.

In relation to the square footage question I have 1872 sq. ft. 1 1/2 story cape with 3 dormers built in 1999. When it's 24 degrees out the 500 gallons can heat the house for 24 hrs. with the starting temp of 210-220. Firing it to just 180 twice a day took all the worry about making it through a day. Plus, you don't have to babysit it and put in more wood. As far as overheat it's just not a problem anymore since my target temp is 180. When I was trying to heat the thing to 220-230 to get through 24 hrs. then the danger of overheating existed. But 500 gallons of tank can take the heat plus you're drawing off it. One other thing- the water heater is what sucks a TON of heat out of the tank. If my daughter takes her usual 20 min. shower man that tank takes a beating. Also used about 6 cords of wood and we had a mild winter. Not too thrilled about that. Having the entire thing in the garage heats the garage without ever turning on the garage heater fan through heat loss in fittings, etc. I'm sure a better storage soution is a 500 gal. propane tank on end fitted and then spray-foamed.

Thanks for all the compliments all! I am proud of it and here in Ohio in the country all there is is propane at $3/gal. Heating the house to 68 degrees with an 80% efficient furnace is $400-$600/month in propane. Stack Heating did the install and they did a great job if you ask me. I wanted to do it myself but sweating 1 1/4" copper and all I just wasn't up to the task. Here's to heating my house all winter for $500 in wood for the next 20 years! Also put pool heat exchanger so getting ready to fire up the 27' round above ground pool to 90 degrees. I'll just find dry fallen wood around the yard (5 acres) and use that to heat the pool.

I don't have any problem heating it up since I started firing it twice a day. Your bottom range is pretty much 140 degrees if your doing DHW. Say an average 30 degree day, firing 500 gallons ONE time a day, I would have to sit there and put more wood than the fire box can hold. So in other words the entire tank would be dragged down to 140 and it would take about 4 hours to get it back to 210, 220, etc. Then I started firing it 2x a day. So since it's only been 12 hours the tank is at maybe 150-160 average and a full load or less can easily put the tank back to 180 so you're not doing any babysitting and the tank is reheated in 2 1/2 hours (one load or less). Hope this helps.